blog about the japanese voices you hear in your head

#13 – Amamiya Sora

It’s her 21st birthday today! Which calls for a celebration, preferably with lots and lots of 肉 in lieu of cake.

I think it’s fair to say Tenchan is the major reason why my interest in seiyuu has revived, something that I’d never imagined remotely possible only as recently as January when I was still thick in amongst the Sone fandom. Of course I was aware of her as one of the Sphere quartet’s kouhai and that she looked a heck of a lot like Tomatsu Haruka, but I totally wasn’t paying attention to any of her work, especially not when the buzz was tied to a game franchise I have no interest in. The turning point came with Isshukan Friends. – as soon as I heard the ending theme, I was falling for her hook, line and sinker. I am extremely partial to seiyuu who can sing well since that is what actually got me interested in them in the first place – you can thank Iwao Junko and Yokoyama Chisa for that one.

The comparison of Tenchan to Harukas is not going to go away any time soon; the two of them are so similar in so many ways, yet so obviously different in others. Obviously they share similarities in looks and in terms of their role within their respective generation of MuRay idols – to borrow a term from the Kpop scene, both of them would function as the ‘visual’ of their groups. As for differences, singing ability is the most apparent with Tenchan being about 20 times a better singer than Haruka ever will be, which should make her an easier sell as a seiyuu idol. When it comes to voice-acting Harukas has the advantage and also the benefit of a huge, varied body of work that shows off her versatility but lest we forget, her debut in Polyphonica was no great shakes and it wasn’t until Kannagi that people actually stopped hating on her (yes, lots of people hated her…). So far Tenchan hasn’t done anything remotely challenging except maybe Tokyo Ghoul’s Touka, but she is landing a lot of lead roles left and right so I expect we’ll get to see the full range of her acting sooner rather than later.

Whatever reasons MuRay may have for pushing her hard what with all those radio shows and hosting jobs and best of all, Ohitori Summer, it’s definitely a great time to be a Tenchan fan. What a great 20th year it has been for Tenchan herself, and may her 21st (and 22nd and so on) years be even better!

Nope, I rarely ever have free time to watch Anime Pia T_T I will have to go and seek that one out…!

As for college etc, it doesn’t look like Tenchan is attending. Or at the very least, Music Ray’n is covering it up well – they’re incredibly determined to protect the personal details of the ToraHamo girls which is sad for us fans but understandable, due to the Tomatsu/Toyosaki stalker incidents.

either way it’s easy to sweep this kind of thing under the carpet since the ‘evidence’ here is flimsy at best & can be denied/ignored. something like hanazawa or taketatsu’s purikura was way more incriminating… still, there are bound to be witch-hunts the more popular any seiyuu/idol gets so the important thing is for agencies to handle the situations properly – a good start is by getting the idol kids to adopt stage names ^^;

also, japan has nothing on korea when it comes to idol scandals – the sphere incident was just so tame by comparison & had no real long-term consequences imo.

Personally, I think he (or his staff) tried to search for ‘スッキリ’ as a tv program but ended up tweeting it instead. Unfortunately for Tenchan, the name of the tv program operates as a double entendre in the context of what transpired last week.

Do you think it was really Tenchan in the last week date pics though? Unless everything I’ve heard about her up til now was a complete bullshit (that would be enough to win her the Best Actress seiyuu award lol), I highly doubt that Taniyama is her type nor that she is a girl that can comfortably go out with a man almost twice her age in the middle of the night (she seems to have trouble even talking smoothly with female co-hosts/guests).

If it really happens, this pairing is certainly much less awesome than Tomatsu x Irino (I would rather ship Hanae Natsuki).

the last time i dismissed a seiyuu x seiyuu rumour they ended up getting married (it’s suzuken x maaya) so i better keep my mouth shut this time 😛

honestly, whatever floats tenchan’s boat is fine by me. though er..kishow is a bit of a player & we all know he likes young girls lol. age gaps can work (tanaka rie/yamadera koichi) but in this case tenchan’s just 21 so i don’t see this heading anywhere but splitsville..that is, if anything ever started in the first place.